IN THE SOVIET UNION, ONLY THE FUTURE IS CERTAIN; THE PAST IS ALWAYS CHANGING: Rhodes Scholars bully University of Cape Town into removing Cecil Rhodes’ statue; England’s Oxford University likely next. In March, the UK Guardian quoted this charming fellow:
Adekeye Adebajo, a Nigerian Rhodes scholar and executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, said on Friday: “At the time I got the Rhodes scholarship, all I could think about was getting a good education and fighting for pan-Africanist issues. This wealth was stolen from Africa when Rhodes plundered the continent, so I felt absolutely no guilt about using the money to criticise what he stood for.”
Yesterday, Daniel Hannan wrote in the London Telegraph that Cecil Rhodes’ statue at Oxford’s Oriel College is next to fall — and now sports a warning label:
Earlier this year, a student at the University of Cape Town emptied a bucket of faeces over a statue of Cecil Rhodes on campus. The bronze sculpture, he and his friends maintained, was symbolic of the “institutional racism” and “white supremacy” that apparently dominate the university.
How did the campus authorities react? By explaining that almost every prominent figure in the late nineteenth century held some views that our generation finds jarring? By gently pointing out that you can disagree with someone, even detest someone, without defacing his statue? By expelling the instigators on grounds of sheer oafishness?
Sadly not. The university senate convened to discuss what to do about the offending mass of metal. Outside, as they deliberated, protesters chanted “One Settler, One Bullet!” Eventually, it was decided that the right not to be offended trumped everything else, and the statue is now boarded up, awaiting its fate.
Now, an Oxonian mob, using the same cretinous #RhodesMustFall hashtag as in South Africa, has complained that walking past that statue inflicts violence on them. Incredibly, rather than telling them to mind their own business, Oriel has rushed out a statement to the effect that it is talking to the planning authorities about removing the effigy and, in the mean time, has put a notice next to it, with the following text:
“Many of Cecil Rhodes’s actions and public statements are incompatible with the values of the College and University today. In acknowledging the historical fact of Rhodes’s bequest, the College does not in any way condone or glorify his views or actions.”
As Hannan writes, “Cecil Rhodes is commemorated by Oriel because he left money to the college. Accepting that money in 1902, and honouring the benefactor, doesn’t mean endorsing his opinions today. If you’re really too dim to understand this, maybe you shouldn’t be at university.”
Read the whole thing.
(H/T: Milo Yiannopoulos.)